Charge Filed In '86 Death

July 19, 1989|By DAN DeWITT Staff Writer

A Langley Air Force Base master sergeant was charged Monday with the 1986 murder of his wife in Texas, a crime a private investigator on the case says he committed to cover up a nationwide cheating scam.

William T. Lipscomb, 33, of 421 Joseph Topping Drive in Poquoson, was charged with murder and obstruction of justice, said Lt. Col. Thomas L. Sack, Langley's public affairs officer.

Lipscomb was arrested at his home July 10, Sack said. He is currently in the brig at the Norfolk Naval Base and will face the military equivalent of a probable cause hearing Aug. 1 at Langley.

Nadine Adams, the victim's mother said Tuesday, "It's like a nighmare that's being lifted."

She and her other daughter, Darlene Adams, strongly suspected Lipscomb had murdered Kathleen Lipscomb because she told them of threats he made.

When she said she planned to tell authorities about the scam, "He said, `If you do that I can't be held responsible for what will happen to you.' And then she said, `What, that I'll end up on a cold slab.' All he said was `That's right.'" Darlene Adams said.

Bevans said information about the cheating scam surfaced while interviewing the couple's friends. The Office of Special Investigation took over the case from the Bexar Sheriff's office in December 1988, Bevans said.

The first solid lead that Lipscomb had killed his wife came from a woman Air Force drill instructor, Bevans said.

"She gave us a pretty interesting statement, very long, very teary-eyed," he said. She admitted not only that she had had an affair with Lipscomb but that he had told her that he planned to kill his wife.

She directed him to other friends, including someone Bevans said was an accomplice in the scandal and the murder. About three weeks ago "he told the entire story" to Air Force investigators, Bevans said.

Lipscomb, who has been in the Air Force since 1974, was remarried in October 1987 to a woman who has two children of her own, Adams said. They lived with Lipscomb and his two children in the house in Poquoson.

All of their Poquoson neighbors contacted Tuesday said that Lipscomb was a good neighbor. Only 16-year-old Vicky Lutz, expressed any reservations.

"He seemed very nice except he looked like he had a temper sometimes. I saw him pick up his dog by the ears and kick him across the yard," she said. "But other than that he seemed like a very nice guy."

Lipscomb is a native of West Point, where his grandfather still lives, said the victim's mother, Nadine Adams of Houston. His parents live in Chesapeake.

The nude body of Lipscomb's wife, Kathleen Lipscomb, was found June 9, 1986 - strangled and sodomized - by a highway northwest of San Antonio, where both lived at the time, said Tom Bevans, a Houston private investigator hired by Adams to investigate her daughter's murder.

Lipscomb was murdered because she tried to use her knowledge of the scam as leverage to get a divorce from her husband and to get custody of their two children, Bevans said.

She tried to divorce him in 1985, but gave up when he left the state with the kids, Adams said. She filed for divorce again in April 1986 and Lipscomb was suspiciously cooperative, Bevans said. He believes that this was because she had threatened to tell about the scam.

He also believes Lipscomb already planned to kill his wife, he said.

Mike Guidry, who owns the agency Bevans works for, said "we understand it is one of the biggest cheating scandals in military history."

Lipscomb, he said, "acted as a clearinghouse" in the scam, which involved the Weighted Airman's Performance Scale, a test used to determine promotions of enlisted men. He was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio at the time, Bevans said. He added that he did not know if Lipscomb continued the operation after being transferred to Langley in June 1987.

Lipscomb had souces "in all 50 states" who took the tests, Guidry said. They memorized the questions and sent them to Lipscomb, along with the correct answers if they knew them.

Lipscomb also passed the information on to others who had provided information on other tests, Guidry said.

There was no money involved, he said. "As far as we know it was just a sharing of in formation." At least 35 to 40 people were involved, he said, "and we think it was a lot more."

Lt. Robyn Whalen of the Langly Public Affairs office would not confirm any details of the cheating scheme, but did confirm that the Air Force is investigating Lipscomb in connection with a WAPS cheating scandal.